Department store chain John Lewis has delivered a 4.8 percent rise in like-for-like sales across the five weeks to Christmas, hitting GBP777m on the back of a successful advertising campaign starring Monty the penguin. In-store sales were flat, but this was offset by a double-digit rise in online sales of 19 percent. Click and Collect is proving particularly popular with shoppers, with more now opting to pick up in-store than home delivery. Black Friday gave the retailer its single biggest sales week in 150 years.

BMW is powering its print ads with NFC technology to give readers exclusive access to content about its electronic car range. The car company is billing the campaign as a media first that places small chips inside copies of "Spiegel Wissen," a quarterly spinoff of European current affairs publication "Der Spiegel." Readers who come across the brand's "Car of Tomorrow" four-page advertorial can tap their smartphones on the creative to instantly download the app for its i electric car range.

Cybercriminals are posing as British publishers, including the "Financial Times" and the BBC, to trick companies into buying digital advertising. Automated exchanges, used for trading Internet display in lightning-fast transactions, are awash with bogus inventory that is being sold for a fraction of the price that reputable publishers typically charge. An FT investigation has discovered that 72 percent of the advertising "impressions" being offered on open exchanges under the FT.com name in a single month were fraudulent.

Britain began to turn its back on music downloads in 2014, with revenue from sales of digital albums and singles falling, for the first time, by 15pc last year -- that is three times faster than sales of the physical formats they were designed to replace. According to figures compiled by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), music downloads have been eating into CD sales for years, but are now themselves under threat from streaming services.Last year's decline in download sales was the first ever recorded in the UK.

Digital outdoor advertising at bus stops and other busy locations will emerge as a much greater alternative to traditional billboards over the next five years, according to the British boss of outdoor advertising group Clear Channel. Andrew Morley, chief executive of Clear Channel UK, said: "Outdoor advertising is becoming interactive, linked to mobile phones and delivered by digital technology. That's where the industry is moving."

The Government's Change4Life anti-obesity initiative returns today for its annual New Year push and again highlights the amount of sugar contained in fizzy drinks. But despite the tone of the campaign and claims that last year's drive hit sales of full-sugar drinks, Change4Life has attracted the sector's biggest player, Coca Cola, to take part in the activity for the first time. The 2015 Change4Life campaign features two M&C Saatchi-created TV spots. One highlights the amount of sugar contained in full-sugar drinks, the other in cereals and snacks.

20th Century Fox is sponsoring Kiss FM UK, the Bauer Media radio station, in a six-figure deal promoting the cinema release of Kingsman: The Secret Service. The film company is backing The Kiss Chosen One, a competition for budding radio presenters, in what it said is its "biggest single creative radio spend." The ads use parts of the film to encourage people to enter the competition to win a three-month on-air contract. Th.e spots were created by Kiss' programming team in-house.